Those Zany Zombies Are Better The Second Time Around

MOVIES DRIVE-IN FU

November 2, 1990|By Joe Bob Briggs

I admit it, I was a scoffer.

I didn't believe they could do it.

Me of little faith.

Night of the Living Dead, regarded by the drive-in-going public of the world as the greatest movie ever made, was rewritten two years ago, and a remake was announced. Not only did it have the blessing of George A. Romero, but George A. Romero was going to write and produce the remake.

Excuse me, but this would be like Mark Twain waking up one morning and saying, ''You know that Huck Finn thing I did? I don't like it anymore. I'm doing it again.''

But he did it. He turned over the direction to Tom Savini, his special-effects makeup guy, the man who made a whole career out of building slimy ghoul faces.

We kept trying to talk him out of it. ''George, don't do it! We love the black and white! It won't work in color!''

But he kept on.

Menahem Golan, the Israeli king of the ninja flick, announced he was producing the remake.

''No! Menahem! Please! This will be a bigger turkey than Treasure of the Four Crowns!''

And Menahem said, ''What is Treasure of the Four Crowns?''

And we yelled back, ''Treasure of the Four Crowns is a 3-D Indiana Jones rip-off full of Spanish extras that you made in 1982!''

And Menahem said, ''I made that?''

And then they got to the point of no return: They started casting the lead roles - in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh, the city where it all started. 1967. George A. Romero was an unknown director of TV commercials. One day he wrote a script called Night of the Flesh Eaters. He hired some amateur actors. He conned a crew into working for him. He got investors. Seven months later, the modern horror film was born. (The distributor retitled it Night of the Living Dead.) One night, for no reason, the zombies rise up out of the earth and start devouring the United States. Seven people are holed up in a Pennsylvania farmhouse trying to decide which is worse - fighting the flesh-eating zombies or fighting each other.

And zombies have never been the same since.

The ''Zombie Stomp,'' the herky-jerky movement of Romero's drunken, stumbling zombies, has been adopted by zombies in every movie since. Brains first became a staple of the American zombie diet in this flick. And it was the first movie where the white guy wasn't the hero. Women did the clear thinking. The black guy did the fighting and protecting. And the white males just got in the way.

In other words, it was also the first Democratic zombie movie. In the '50s, all the heroes were Republicans, fighting against Russian-type space aliens that were trying to take over our minds, and the women all stood by their men. In George A. Romero's movies, the women have to knock the men out of the way with a rifle butt to get a good crack at the mostly white, mostly male zombies. (Actually, the zombies are pale yellow in the remake.) In 1968, George had a hard time getting anybody to release Night of the Living Dead, but by 1970 it was considered the greatest horror film in history. Romero has made two sequels, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, and one of the original producers has done an excellent comedy version, Return of the Living Dead. The original movie has probably been seen by more people worldwide than any other horror flick except Psycho.

And now they've done it again.

They've not only done it again, they've done it better.

This time - with professional actors, with color, with special effects, with zombies that out-zombie the original zombies - they've told the exact same story with about five minutes of changes in the plot, just enough to give it a great surprise at the end. Even though you've seen it before and even though you know what the zombies are gonna do and even though you know what each of the people inside the house is gonna do, it still scares the bejabbers out of you and satisfies the first rule of drive-in moviemaking: Anybody can die at any moment.

I'm humiliated that I was such a doubter. I apologize to Mr. Savini and Mr. Romero.

Wheel in the Academy members from Palm Springs. Hook up their IVs. Force 'em to watch this.

Because, as Barbara says, ''They're us. We're them and they're us.''

Zombierama.

No breasts. Twenty-one dead bodies. Exploding pickup. Exploding supporting actors. Neck-crunching. Zombie corral. Zombie target practice. Zombie bonfire. Eighteen gallons of blood. A 74 on the Vomit Meter. Kung Fu. Zombie Fu. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Patricia Tallman, as Barbara, one of the greatest screamers in moviedom, for slowly going crazy with a shotgun in her hand and for saying, ''What's happening?''; Tony Todd, as Ben, for doing the impossible - surpassing the original performance of Duane Jones - and for saying, ''This is hell on Earth''; Tom Towles, best known as Otis in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, as Cooper, for stealing the TV, barricading himself in the cellar, slapping his wife around and screaming, ''You bunch of yo-yos!''; and for Tom Savini, the director, for perfectly preserving drive-in history.